11 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Good for you. More people should take my advice more often.

I find bumper stickers particularly annoying. I find, in general, any thought small enough to fit on a bumper sticker is probably wrong. But i do enjoy the fish vs fish arguments. The one with the dino is cute and I haven't seen it before.

The world we live in is complex. the words we use to describe it need to be equally complex. There aren't just 2 kind of people. I don't care how smart your kid or your dog is.

Yeah the vanity plates are over the top here in Virginia -- more annoying than the bumper stickers.

My favorite, though, is when people tape political bumper stickers to the inside of their windows during election season rather than actually sticking them on their cars. Nothing like having the courage of one's convictions.

Bumper stickers are the exact opposite of civil discourse. It's the vehicular version of child yelling out an opinion and then running from the room before anyone else can comment or disagree or start a reasonable discussion.

I think the evolution bumper sticker is a way to counteract the "it's just a theory" dismissal. It is a scientific theory, but in science, that means it is considered to be a fact, not a vague hypothesis.

"Anon- I understand that is the intention, however the comparison of gravity with evolution is preposterous because gravity can actually be studied, evolution cannot."

I'm not a scientist, but it seems unlikely that for over a century, evolution would be considered the foundation of modern biology, if it is something that cannot be studied. The recent genetic evidence is hard to get around.

Evolution cannot be experimentally studied because it is not something that is observable or reproducable in the same way gravity can be. It is assumed that genetics, or changes within a species over time, or the similarities in the DNA of different species serve as evidence that there was between species evolution. However, any between species evolution would have occurred millenia ago and as such cannot be reproduced or studied in a manner to "prove" them. The presence of something such as similarities between the DNA of different species may, at face value, appear to prove evolution from a common source, that conclusion does not meet the level of scientific "evidence" just like correlations do not indicate causation. That does not mean between species evolution did not happen, just that the level of evidence for the theory of evolution comes no where near the level of evidence for something like gravity.

I would agree that political bumper stickers can be very uncivil, but would politely disagree a bit with Librarian... they are just a way to maximize bandwidth and eyespace; not necessarily a way to avoid dialogue.